Controversy Sermon Illustrations

Controversy Sermon Illustrations

There is a place for righteous indignation, but there is also a place for reasoning together; and it may be that we can accomplish as much by a conference as by a long-range bombardment of invisible foes. John Wesley, wrote in the preface to his sermons: "Point me out a better way than I have yet known. Show me it is so, by plain proof of Scripture. . . . May I not request of you, farther, not to give me hard names in order to bring me into the right way. . . . Nay, perhaps, if you are angry, so shall I be too; and then there will be small hopes of finding the truth. If once anger arise, . . . this smoke will so dim the eyes of my soul, that I shall be able to see nothing clearly."

It may be, too, that conservative and evangelical men, in deep distress over what they deem false teaching in the name of the gospel, have denounced too much and conferred too little. "Hard names," too, may have been sometimes relied upon instead of "plain proof of Scripture."